Looking at America's Police State

Here we are, all primed and pumped for the Republican Convention. This has given the Democrats lots to talk about and also an opportunity to skewer McCain and his new running mate. This doesn’t surprise me, nor does it anger me, every demeaning thing that is said about GOP has this writer’s endorsement, they couldn’t pick on a more deserving target. The only thing that bothers me is their total lack of objectivity when they criticize what the GOP stands for. It hardly influences the masses when they harp on McCain’s war drum beating skills when everyone can observe that Barack Obama’s own predilection for blasting out a great beat on his own set of drums with a talent that has greatly improved over the past few months.

Political analysts and strategy advisers have grossly underestimated the American people this time. It has been painfully obvious that most Americans have let Bush and his henchmen in Congress get away with murder, and I mean that literally, while so many have been silent and complicit. Our leaders have no conscience, and hatch their schemes and plan for conquest, while millions of us wait for a chance to change this nation’s direction. Sadly, for all of us that are truly paying attention, we see that real change is only a mirage.

Just as hope cannot be instilled in society by the hopeless, honesty can not be taught by thieves, and justice can not be administered by criminals, change will not come from those locked into the status quo. The American people however, hoping against reason, tried desperately to believe that one of them would morph into one of us. It may have been just another time in the history of man when good would actually triumph over evil and when reason would replace insanity and we would have a fairytale ending to this national tragedy we have been witnessing during the last decade. The facts are, we have been offered two roads to travel, but they both take us to the same destination; war for resources and empire for profit.

Americans are a people that are slow to anger; in this case I am not describing the people, not their government. The people did not want to enter World War II until we were attacked directly, and once provoked; the people were willing to sacrifice all to ensure victory. We are not a nation of cowards, nor are we a nation of pawns. The mistake that those in power have made is the mistake of underestimating a cultures resolve. Once a certain line is crossed, once boundaries have been overstepped, it is impossible to undo the damage it has done. I believe that this is what’s happening to both political parties in America. The two corporate-led political parties have stepped over the line, both parties have asked Americans to accept the unacceptable, and both parties have lied to the people and both have been, unfortunately for them, caught in their lies.

While the Democrats have been decrying the war in Iraq, and have portrayed Senator John McCain as the “war candidate”, Senator Obama has tried to keep the focus on the economy while moving steadily in the same direction as McCain. The impassioned speech he gave in Denver was looked at skeptically by many, not because of what he said, but for what he failed to say. There was no mention of restoring what we had lost during the Bush Administration, things such as habeas corpus and the end of electronic surveillance of citizens or warrantless searches of homes and property. There was no mention at all of reviewing the draconian laws put in place by Bush and Cheney, or the torture that they have been accused of practicing. There were however, veiled threats against Iran and Russia, and proposals that the military should grow by 65,000 combat soldiers, 10,000 to be sent to Afghanistan so that we can prosecute the “right war” there while leaving tens of thousands of troops in Iraq. This in a time of economic uncertainty when this country spends more on its military than almost all other nations on Earth combined.

Obama didn’t skip a beat when he talked about “Russian aggression”, apparently supporting the lies from the government and the western corporate-owned media that Russia was the aggressor in Georgia when the truth was that Georgia initiated hostilities to regain the autonomous regions. He has supported Bush and his quest to put nuclear medium range missiles in Poland as Russia rightly declares that this would put them in an indefensible position and warned that they would take military action if this comes to pass. This threat by the Russians is completely understandable; it is the American government that is unreasonable. In 1963 we almost went to war over the same type if missiles being installed in Cuba. When JFK finally promised we would take out our medium range missiles in Turkey, war was averted. Now we must sit idly while Bush and Cheney orchestrate another nuclear crisis, this time America plays the villain.

We postulate that a nuclear Iran is unacceptable and that we will embark on a military solution to make sure that it doesn’t happen. The facts are that the United States over 18,000 nuclear warheads, most of them multiple warheads’ (MIRV’s). Iran’s most immediate threat, Israel, has according to most sources, over 300 nuclear warheads in its arsenal. This is a prime example of total hypocrisy. If Israel would agree to dismantle its nuclear weapons and its nuclear programs, would Iran follow suit? Nobody knows, as this line of thought has never been vocalized or written about. Do the majority of American citizens feel that Israel is so important in the scheme of things that they would rush into a situation that could very well provoke World War III? Would American mothers and fathers be willing to sacrifice the lives of their children to insure that Israel has military superiority over Iran? I hardly think so, but if you canalize the rhetoric coming from both political parties in this country, you would think that we would. The truth is that this nation seems to be willing to do anything in order to protect Israel, even if it means starting a thermo-nuclear war.

When it comes to civil liberties and foreign policy, the difference between the Democrats and the Republicans seem negligible. When it comes to domestic policy, we hear Obama say that he will not outsource our industries and pay workers a fair wage, but when will we hear about support for the unions? What about stopping the “privatization” of our resources that has become the mantra of the corporate world, and when will he propose doing something about the corporate influence of the media? In this country, where a handful of corporations control the bulk of newspapers, television and radio outlets in almost all of our major cities, when will we hear about a return to Federal regulation? Why do we allow this?

The truth is that we won’t hear about it. How can we when our media is so thoroughly controlled by so few corporate interests? Propaganda does not necessarily mean that governments are the only ones that put it out. This is corporate propaganda and it is just as detrimental to a free society as its government cousin. Benito Mussolini once remarked that “fascism could be called corporatism”. This is nothing new. When corporations and the government control the media and the resources in a nation, and the people have no voice, that’s simply fascism. This is where we find ourselves today.

The people of this country are finding that out. We have all heard of the police raids on protesters that occurred Sunday morning in St. Paul before any protests took place. We have heard about how the police went into houses occupied by college students, guns drawn, and how they handcuffed the “suspects” and made them lie face-down for hours. We have read about the warrantless searches and the confiscation of computers and other personal items. This was done by police that didn’t even come from St. Paul!

There were arrests of demonstrators in Denver also. Some of the same heavy-handed techniques were used there. Since when do peaceful protesters deserve this kind of treatment? what’s happening in this country? When did we lose the right to dissent?

The American people are simply fed-up with both the Republicans and the Democrats. We are tired of the wars and the lies. We are tired of the fear tactics and the police state we are evolving into. The thought of a third-party candidate winning this election is not so far-fetched as it once was. It’s about time.

What do the major party VP nominees add to the tickets?

What exactly was the point of last week's announcements for vice presidential picks? On one hand we have a shell of a candidate promoting "change" but doing everything in his power to establish himself as an establishment candidate, picking a Washington, D.C. insider with a record of corporate whoring and unquestioning support for U.S. imperial policy. Small wonder Barack Obama is either neck-and-neck with or trailing John McCain in the polls; he insists on turning off the very people he needs to put him over the top, including the Clinton supporters. On the other hand we have the Republican candidate picking a "hockey mom," with even less political experience than his Democratic counterpart (the very thing he chides his rival for), just so he can pander to the bloc of Clinton supporters inclined to vote for McCain out of spite.

In all the hype and bluster, though, one important question remains: what does either VP pick actually add to the ticket? Joe Biden, a typical DLC insider with a hawkish foreign policy record and a habit of voting for bills that hurt working Americans, is just the sort of candidate likely to further alienate progressives — the very people Obama needs to put him over the top against McCain. Assuming progressives will get behind the Democratic nominee simply because he and his followers choose to deny any other alternative exists has always been a recipe for disaster. Just ask Al Gore and John Kerry. Obama has done everything he can to blow this election by turning off all those who put their faith and hopes in him thinking he represented a departure from the DLC. Picking Biden, though it allows for a tough yet compliant attack dog in the general election who makes up for a perceived lack of experience, really does nothing for the Democratic nominee's chances.

Then there's Sarah Palin. I get that she was tapped to be McCain's veep because of her youth and sex, but those are really the only two things she has going for her as a candidate. As Michael Moore explained to Keith Olbermann the other night, McCain's cynical pander is based on the assumption that American women are stupid — that they'll vote for a woman because of her gender and not her politics. Her record and positions are typically extreme right-wing: opposed to abortion rights, opposed to gay marriage, supports tax cuts for the wealthy and police state thuggery, among other horrendous policies. None of those qualities, however, have won a presidential election — not for the past sixteen years, anyway (the last two were rigged, so they cannot be counted on as legitimate examples of right-wing extremism winning anything). Women who actually care about their reproductive rights and are offended by Stepford wife-type politicians may be galvanized to vote against McCain and his so-called "hockey mom." There's also her firing of Alaska's public safety director, Walter Monegan, for refusing to fire her former brother-in-law. This scandal is so outrageous there that the Alaskan legislature is investigating what the Washington Post is dubbing Palin's own "trooper-gate."

This may be the first time since George H.W. Bush lost to Bill Clinton that a Republican candidate blew an election by dubious virtue of being dumber than his Democratic counterpart, but don't count McCain out yet; there are plenty of caging lists, hackable electronic voting machines, and bought state secretaries with which to steal this election, along with a Democratic rival who insists on replaying the Kerry campaign.

An open letter to Barack Obama

Mr. Obama:



As one of the relatively few people in this country who saw through your act early on, and for the right reasons, let me first say how utterly ashamed I am to call myself a registered Democrat. You are a disgrace not only to the party at large, but to the thousands — perhaps, dare I say, even millions of Americans who were and remain so desperate for someone to come and rescue our once-great nation from the fascists that they placed their hope and faith in you. Hang your head in shame, and then look me straight in the eye and don't turn away until I'm done.

According to an article in New York Magazine, the electorate has had about enough of you. A Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll has you running in a statistical dead heat with Republican John McCain, FiveThirtyEight.com's poll doesn't look good for your chances either, and Zogby has your GOP counterpart five points ahead. Are you trying to blow this election for us?!? Because it sure as hell seems as though you are.

The NY Magazine article gives several reasons for your pathetic performance thus far, but it left out the most obvious: not only your consistent refusal to fight back against the smears of the far right and its tired old champion for this election cycle, but, most importantly, your deliberate alienation of your own political party's base. Time and again, you have demonstrated that you do not represent Americans on any issue of importance, and voters realize this. Long before you secured the Democratic Party nomination to be the ringer candidate against the election sham's already-chosen victor, and every day since then, you have taken positions including (but in no way limited to):

• Your vile "Harry and Louise" attack mailers, which used the same right-wing talking points against Hillary Clinton's health care proposals that were used to great success in the 1990s,
  
  
• Your purging — quickly followed by a reinstatement after the inevitable uproar from outraged supporters — of roughly nine hundred anti-war delegates from California, probably out of fear that they would defect over to the Clinton camp once they caught wind of your impending flip-flop regarding a pullout from Iraq,
  
  
• Your regular, condescending, talking down to Blacks in speeches,
  
  
• Your praise of the traitor Ronald Reagan,
  
  
• Your betrayal during the FISA battle,
  
  
• Your allegedly telling the Canadian government that your initial apparent criticism of NAFTA was "just campaign rhetoric," which was quickly buried thanks in large part to a denial by Canada that you had said any such thing,
  
  
• Your provocative and unnecessary pandering to Israel's fascist government over the topic of Jerusalem, and
  
  
• Your embrace of the horrendous Friedman school of economic policy.

That's just off the top of my head, nor is it the most worrisome reason for your refusal to campaign like someone who wants to win. I have a friend named Dave who has worked on numerous Democratic political campaigns, including yours. He is witness to the stupid things you've got your people in critical states such as Ohio doing, such as:

• Failing to even install a working telephone system in your Lakewood, Ohio, campaign office,
  
  
• Sending your people out to register voters — REPUBLICAN-leaning ones at that — whom you MUST know will NEVER vote for you, and
  
  
• Deliberately avoiding mentioning that it was under the presidency of Bill Clinton that average American incomes were higher, while it was under the shrub that those same incomes fell.

This isn't rocket science, Obama; it's politics. You've been in the proverbial game long enough to know this. You seem hellbent on losing this election, and you need to explain why to those who placed their faith and hopes in you before you dash them just a little over two months from now. It's that, or pull your head out of your rear orifice and start trying to win this thing. This race has never been, nor shall it ever be, about you; it's about this country and the people in it, and turning back from the precipice of fascist empire your predecessors have brought us all to.

I'm not the only one who feels this way, nor am I the only one capable of reading polls and understanding why the results are the way they are. Tim Gatto, Dave Lindorff, and David Sirota, for example, all have entries today either implying or flat out stating why you are losing this election — and it's all for the same reason: your insistence on alienating your own political party's base. Get with the program and listen to the advice of those who are trying to help you. Tell the Iago-like advisers whispering in your ear to screw off, that they're costing you the election and you're done with them. It's that, or go into hiding from all the people you've let down once you've delivered your concession speech.

That's all I have to say to you, Obama. You have your choice to make, though I am certain you made it long ago. Just know this: no matter what happens in November, you'll still be comfortably employed, while the rest of us will have to continue suffering the conservative policies you support.



Sincerely,

Michael Kwiatkowski

Pot, meet Kettle.

The boy just can't seem to stop making an ass of himself, can he? John McCain, who can't even tell Iraqi resistance fighters from Iranians, can't distinguish between al-Qaeda and Iran -- because as far as he's concerned, they're all the same -- is criticizing Barack Obama for perceived foreign policy inexperience because the senator supposedly representing Illinois doesn't see Iran as a threat on the same level as the Soviet Union in its day.

CHICAGO - Republican John McCain accused Democrat Barack Obama of inexperience and reckless judgment for saying Iran does not pose the same serious threat to the United States as the Soviet Union did in its day.

McCain made the attack Monday in Chicago, Obama's home turf.

"Such a statement betrays the depth of Senator Obama's inexperience and reckless judgment. These are very serious deficiencies for an American president to possess," McCain said in an appearance at the restaurant industry's annual meeting.

He was referring to comments Obama made Sunday in Pendleton, Ore.: "Iran, Cuba, Venezuela — these countries are tiny compared to the Soviet Union. They don't pose a serious threat to us the way the Soviet Union posed a threat to us. And yet we were willing to talk to the Soviet Union at the time when they were saying, `We're going to wipe you off the planet.'"

Let's get something straight here, boy: you can't even tell one Arab group or nation apart from another. Where the hell do you get off chastising Obama? And what, may I ask, leads you to think Iran is as big a threat as the old Soviet Union was? Come on, I know you're a liar, but you're not stupid. You know as well as anyone else what the National Intelligence Estimate last year declared: that Iran is not developing nuclear weapons; that it abandoned any such attempts in 2003; and that its nuclear ambitions now seem to be geared more toward energy production than weapons.

An honest man might, in attacking his potential opponent over foreign policy naïvety, might have at least taken care to mention the NIE, why he disagreed with it -- based on available evidence, and pointed out any rhetorical flubs that might indicate said potential opponent might engage in talks incompetently. But John McCain is neither honest, or a man. He is a liar, a subhuman beast trying to pander his way into the White House by terrorizing the American public.

McCain needs to admit he was lying, apologize for having done so, and drop out of the race for the presidency. These are the only honorable things he can do. Anything less is unacceptable.

Why Clinton is going to become 2008's Ralph Nader.

Everyone's talking about Hillary Clinton's win in Pennsylvania yesterday over rival Barack Obama. Ten whole percentage points: may I make whoopee in my pants, now? It's still not enough to help the senator supposedly representing New York catch up to the one supposedly representing Illinois in terms of pledged delegates.

Clinton's broke, trailing her Democratic rival by a small but undeniable margin, and now reduced to threatening to nuke Iran in the event it uses its non-existent nuclear weapons to attack Israel (let me reiterate: Iran is not developing nuclear weapons, a finding held by all sixteen U.S. intelligence agencies—so the fact that Clinton and Obama keep acting as though the opposite is true means neither of them has a fucking clue on anything, and why we're supposed to trust their judgment when they can't even call bullshit on the lies being shat out by the Bush-Cheney regime is beyond my comprehension). Meanwhile, John McCain gets to have the media give him another round of reportorial oral sex for his "decency" in choosing not to run a dirty ad against Obama.

As recently as last month Zogby and other polls were showing the senator pretending to represent Arizona narrowly ahead of either of his Democratic rivals for the dictatorship. The Republican is using the time between now and the general election to win back his party's crazed right-wing base, raise money, and plot out his general election strategy. Do I even need to continue explaining what this all means?

Hillary Clinton wants the presidency so bad she is willing to tear the Democratic Party asunder in order to get it, leaving it too battered and weak to win in November. She absolutely cannot let it go, cannot allow an upstart like Barack Obama to "steal" what she thinks is hers by inheritance. And it sure as hell doesn't help that Obama is too big a pandering, hard-headed phony to be able to seal the deal and win a clear mandate from Democratic voters by embracing the Edwards-Kucinich bloc. No, he'd rather use them and dump them to the curb, and his piss-poor performance at the last debate proved he, too, is running out of steam. Like Clinton, he never expected to have to compete this long for the Democratic nomination, and he is becoming dangerously low on ideas.

So no matter how the remaining primaries play out, this fight is going all the way to the convention in August. All because Hillary Clinton won't let go of the illusion that the presidency is somehow hers. If 2008 accomplishes anything, it may be to finally rid Ralph Nader of the blame (wholly undeserved) for destroying any chance Democrats might have had of winning back the White House this century.

Somebody pass me a brick, so I can throw it at my television set the next time I have news coverage of the campaign on. Oh, wait, I have my steel mace for that. Never mind. At any rate, I'd be really grateful for some ideas for how we might avoid this fiasco—because if we can't, the massive ego of Hillary Clinton is going to rain shit down on all of America.

Obama had better pull his head out of his posterior.

According to MSNBC, McCain has erased Obama's ten point lead over him. If the senator from Illinois doesn't start running like a Democrat, and stop acting like a fucking Republican, he's going to find himself making one hell of a concession speech come November. And that shall be bad in far more ways than one.

If Obama really wanted to win this thing, he could have distinguished himself by running to the left of Hillary Clinton -- not to the right of her. His failure to seal the deal, combined with his Republican-style attacks (not that Mrs. Clinton is innocent of following suit) and condescending dismissals of the challenges faced by minorities, indicates that he is fully prepared to blow it come November. Consider this: Recent polls show that Ralph Nader may actually get up to five percent of the vote in November, and that a sizable number of Clinton supporters are likely to vote for McCain -- twenty-eight percent, in fact.

That is how things stand at this point. Can you imagine what shall happen if a bruised and battered Obama comes out of the Democratic National Convention, having alienated upwards of 33% of Democratic and Democratic-leaning voters, and with the media attacking him at every turn having smelled blood in the water? Imagine that pathetic creature going up against McCain. We cannot allow overconfidence to cost us this time. There really is far too much at stake.

What Romney's departure means for the general election.

With Mitt Romney now out of the Republican race for president, John McCain is much, much closer to locking up his political party's nomination. What does this mean for Democrats? Bad news, and here's why:

McCain now has less to worry about going into November. Mike Huckabee might yet pose a serious challenge, since he has the backing of the religious far right. But this assumes that Huckabee manages to win most states in the remaining primaries and caucuses. And there's no reason to think this shall be the case. The most likely scenario is that McCain continues to do well, and there will be no brokered Republican National Convention.

By contrast, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are essentially tied for delegates, both are likely to go to the Democratic National Convention to settle who shall be the party's nominee for president. Obama has a slight advantage of money; Clinton has had to lend her campaign money from out of pocket, and have her paid staff go without their salaries for a while. But since Super Tuesday, both Clinton and Obama have managed to raise roughly equal amounts of campaign money.

As reported by DHinMI, Howard Dean is trying to get the two prima donna candidates to make some sort of deal to avoid a brokered convention. The chairman of the Democratic National Committee knows why a brokered convention would be bad for the party; while McCain uses the time between now and his party's convention to shore up support, raise money, and form a general election campaign strategy against the Democratic nominee, we'll still be fighting the nominating process out until August. That means whoever the nominee is shall go into the general election exhausted from a drawn out primary fight, and having expended much of his or her financial resources.

So the advantage clearly goes to McCain, if Clinton and Obama insist on staying in competition for the Democratic nomination until convention. And this is where Dean's attempt to make the two prima donnas reach some sort of deal shall fail. Because their egos are so huge, neither Clinton or Obama is willing to accept second fiddle status as vice president. And the fierceness of the campaign so far has taken a publicly visible toll; at the shrub's last SotU liefest, Obama gave Clinton the cold shoulder as she moved to shake hands with Senator Edward Kennedy -- who endorsed her rival. Obama's latest 'Harry and Louise'-style attacks on Clinton's health care plan (which is pissing off a lot of progressives, including economist Paul Krugman), strengthens the likelihood that there will be no Clinton-Obama or Obama-Clinton ticket.

So while many are cheering Romney's departure from the Republican race, it also presents a serious problem for Democrats. The opposition now has less of a reason to worry about its chances in November, while we have plenty to worry about. Howard Dean's attempts to get the prima donnas to shelve their differences and reach some kind of deal are a public acknowledgment of this problem.

Which makes it all the more sad that John Edwards and not Clinton or Obama was the one to call it quits. Had he won enough early states to be the likely nominee, all this would have been settled and we would be able to stand a chance in November. But now, with Obama and Clinton duking it out until convention, we have once again shot ourselves in the foot by sticking our party with a fundamentally weak candidate going into the general election. The Democratic Party, as usual, has snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. And that is bad for all of America.